Study: Potential For Group Rape Exists At Many U.s. Colleges

March 4, 1986|By Nadine Brozan, The New York Times

The theme of the costume party held by the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity and the Delta Gamma sorority was ``Young Doctors in Love,`` and the mood last Nov. 14 in the fraternity house at San Diego State University was carefree -- too carefree, some now say, following a report that a gang rape occurred that night.

An 18-year-old student at the university said she was sexually assaulted by three or more members of Pi Kappa Alpha during the party. The incident is far from unusual, according to observers of college life. In fact, decisions were handed down in one week this month in three cases in which groups of college men were said to have raped single victims.

In Gainseville, Fla., University of Florida fraternity Pi Lamda Phi agreed to a two-year probation and abstention from some social activities after a freshman said she was raped in the fraternity during a 1984 ``little sister`` party.

In Iowa City, Iowa, three fraternity members or pledges pleaded guilty to charges of assault causing bodily injury. A 20-year-old student said they had raped her in the Mayflower Residence Hall at the University of Iowa on Nov. 9. At San Diego State, the president, Thomas B. Day, announced that the fraternity chapter would lose its status as a university organization for at least five years. Pi Kappa Alpha officers said they would appeal the action. And in Madison, Wis., Judge Robert Pekowsky of the Dane County Circuit Court ruled that there was sufficient evidence to try three University of Minnesota basketball players. They were arrested last month on charges of sexually assaulting a woman from another college in a hotel after a game. The complaint said each one attacked the woman and that two of the three aided each other.

Word of the accusations provoked shock and anger on the campuses. Officials of the schools said recently that charges of rape by more than one person had never been brought against any of their students, but it has happened elsewhere.

Only now is the cloak of secrecy around group rape in collegiate settings beginning to lift. One indicator is found in a study by the Project on the Status and Education of Women, which is part of the Association of American Colleges. The project recently released a report, ``Campus Gang Rape: Party Games.`` It cited more than 50 incidents at a wide range of institutions -- ``public, private, religiously affiliated, Ivy League, large and small`` -- but it did not identify the institutions or individuals involved. The report noted that ``the vast majority of male students do not gang rape.`` But it said, ``Apparently no institution is immune from the potential problem of `fraternity gang rape` or `party gang rape.` ``

Although no comprehensive statistics have been collected, Mary P. Koss, a psychology professor at Kent State University who has studied rape among college students since 1976, has come up with an estimate. Extrapolating from a study of rape she conducted for the federally financed ``Ms. Magazine Campus Project on Sexual Assault,`` Koss estimated that 16 group rapes had taken place on 33 campuses in the 12 months preceding the study, conducted between November 1984 and March 1985.

According to victims, rape crisis counselors, university officials and other authorities, incidents of collegiate group rape seem to have many elements in common. The case at San Diego State -- as described by Sue Raney, a spokesman for the school; James Collins, the lawyer for the victim; and Steve Casey, a special assistant to the district attorney of San Diego County -- seems in many respects typical. The woman at the center of the controversy, an 18-year-old Delta Gamma pledge, has withdrawn from school and gone into seclusion. But she told others that she became dizzy at the party after drinking punch that she thought contained no alcohol. She asked for a place to rest, was handed another supposedly non-alcoholic drink, and passed out. When she regained consciousness, she found herself in a room with several men, some of them naked and one of them on top of her. The rest of the details remain hazy.

Nearly all the women who have said they were raped in group situations at colleges have said that they were drunk, sometimes involuntarily, or high on drugs.

The next afternoon the woman, who said she had been a virgin before the party, told a staff member at the university health service that she believed she had been raped. She was taken to Grassmont Hospital, where it was determined that sexual activity had occurred.